Documentarian, commercial director, and “Unofficial Talent Scout of NYC” Nicolas Heller, aka New York Nico, joined Debbie Millman and Steven Heller last week to discuss his first book, New York Nico’s Guide to NYC.

So, why a book? And why this topic?

One has to understand Heller’s origin story. Like many independence-seeking kids, even those born and raised in Manhattan with design celebrities for parents and whose nickname at three years old was “Major of 16th Street,” Heller wanted to spread his wings. That meant getting out of New York. First, it was Boston for college. Then, Heller went to Hollywood. After three failed driving tests and six months of no bookings, he returned to NYC without a plan and looking for his next step.

On a fateful walk through Union Square, Heller met a local street celebrity, Te’Devan, a “6-foot-7 freestyle-rapping Jew.” Heller made a five-minute documentary of the man, and he never looked back.

Author headshot: Jeremy Cohen

Heller spoke about how the pandemic cemented Heller’s focus on struggling mom-and-pop businesses across the city, his effort to raise money for Army Navy Bags in the Village, and his desire to help preserve what the city is starting to lose.

The most frequently asked question he gets asked by his audience is, “I’m going to be in New York; what should I do?” So, when he was approached about doing a book, he couldn’t turn it down. The book furthers his mission to document what New York is in danger of losing as it changes. Over a year and a half, Heller and a team consisting of a co-writer, photographers, and others traversed the boroughs to interview the proprietors of each of the 100 quaint, classic, small businesses included in the book, all places Heller loves.

It was the best experience of my life, and I want to keep making books.

Nicolas Heller

Register here to watch the recording and get the insiders’ take: Heller’s top five places to visit (one for each borough, yes, even Staten Island). There’s an East Village barber shop home to Big Mike’s art gallery, a nearly 200-year-old tavern (where parts of Goodfellas were filmed), a Sri Lankan restaurant, an old-school panini shop, and a Latin music store run by a 93-year-old man.

We learned of a Harlem man who collected items he found in the trash for 35 years and how he’s curated his private collection in the back of an active garage. The book taught his curious and NYC-knowledgeable father something, too.

Many other NYC gems are waiting to be discovered by you; buy your copy of New York Nico’s Guide to NYC.

Coming up on Tuesday, December 10, PRINT Book Club will host designer, lettering artist, and retail shop owner Jessica Hische to talk about her latest book for kids. Learn more and register here.

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We’ll bet our December guest needs no introduction. Designer, lettering artist, bestselling author, and retail shop owner Jessica Hische will join Steven Heller and Debbie Millman at the next PRINT Book Club. The always-generous Hische will discuss life, craft, and her newest book, My First Book of Fancy Letters.

A bit from the publisher:

“From the New York Times best-selling creator of Tomorrow I’ll Be Brave comes a delightful spin on the traditional alphabet book, featuring creatively hand-lettered words from A to Z and an affirming message for young readers.

Did you know letters can be ATHLETIC, BUBBLY, or even CREEPY?

Using unique lettering styles to showcase a fun word for each letter of the alphabet, this inventive picture book by creator Jessica Hische highlights how letters can come in all shapes and sizes—and are awesome in their own ways.“

Ellen Shapiro sat down with Hische recently to discuss My First Book of Fancy Letters. Read the interview here.

Don’t miss our conversation with Jessica Hische on Tuesday, December 10 at 4 PM ET. Register for the live discussion and buy your copy of My First Book of Fancy Letters. (Psst. It makes a great gift!)

The post “J is for Jessica” Hische Talks Fancy Letters at our December PRINT Book Club appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

At our November PRINT Book Club, we’ll welcome Nicolas Heller, aka New York Nico for a discussion of his new book, New York Nico’s Guide to NYC. Nicolas Heller is the son of PRINT’s Steven Heller and artist Louis Fili. In our recent interview with the Heller-Fili family, Heller discusses being raised by creative parents and the city of New York; both very much inform his unique point of view.

Nicolas Heller is a filmmaker and a social media icon. In his first book, Heller takes us on a tour of 100 shops, institutions, and eateries, and the characters who shape them. He covers beloved spots across all five boroughs (you too, Staten Island!), visiting barbers, kosher delis, and record stores, to name just a few.

By hearing the living histories of New York’s most colorful characters, Nico shows us the heart and soul of the place they call home.

From the publisher:

“What makes New York City the greatest city in the world? As one of the foremost chroniclers of New York’s local legends and urban glory, New York Nico has thoughts. Nico gets asked a lot of questions about his hometown. Where’s the best slice, pastrami sandwich, cup of coffee, vintage store, or bookshop?

In this must-have city guide, New York Nico takes readers on an epic tour of his 100 can’t-miss NYC spots, including food, shopping, and so much more. As he traverses the five boroughs, he offers a raw and authentic “locals-only” guide to the city so nice they named it twice. But behind every New York institution are the personalities who make them special.”

Left: Nicolas Heller; Right: a recent feature in The New York Times covering a book launch event at Astor Place Hairstylists, one of the institutions featured in the book

Don’t miss our conversation with Nicolas Heller on Thursday, November 21, at 4 PM ET! Register for the live discussion and buy your copy of New York Nico’s Guide to NYC.

The post New York Nico Shares His City at the Next PRINT Book Club appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Designer (textiles, furniture, and interiors), graphic designer, and architect Alexander Girard refused to be boxed in by medium or style. He played with an aesthetic uniquely his own—defying the design canon. You may not know something to be “an Alexander Girard,” but his work is most definitely stamped on your design DNA.

Here are just some of the phrases Todd Oldham and Kiera Coffee, our guests and collaborators on Let The Sun In, used to describe the ineffable Alexander Girard:

“An incredible synthesizer.”

“A joyous creator.”

“Endless cross-pollination.”

“Inspired by everything.”

“Would have been himself anywhere.”

“Both timeless and ahead of his time.”

Todd Oldham’s first exposure to Girard was at eight or nine years old, in DFW’s new Braniff terminal. Oldham remembered being surrounded by patterns and color (and being able to touch the dinosaur bones they had excavated while building the new terminal). That explosion of color and pattern, though he didn’t know it then, was courtesy of a collaboration between Alexander Girard and Emilio Pucci to redesign every aspect of Braniff International Airways. Oldham later learned the extent of the Braniff project: Girard and Pucci designed 17,000 items across 80 colorways (luggage tags, ticket jackets, timetables, seat fabric, the actual jets!).

Kiera Coffee’s recognition of Girard happened naturally as a design writer. She had long admired his work without knowing his name and understanding who he was. Coffee’s collaboration with Oldham on Girard has been an ongoing project. Let The Sun In is the second book on the artist they’ve worked together on. (Fun fact: the first had serious “plunk value,” weighing nearly twelve pounds!) Let The Sun In is the perfect coffee table size.

This book is glorious everything. It’s the superstar tribute [Alexander Girard] deserves.

Todd Oldham

How do you encapsulate Alexander Girard’s singularly open and curious mind in a short recap? We can’t. But we hope you’ll register here to watch the recording and buy your copy of Let The Sun In.

Here are some additional links worth your time:

The gorgeous Girard Studio website.

Girard’s work on the La Fonda del Sol restaurant in Midtown Manhattan, in Architectural Digest.

More about a fan favorite: Girard’s John Deere mural.

A fun feature on the Braniff redesign by Billie Muraben: “The End of the Plain Plane.”

Coming up on November 21, the PRINT Book Club will welcome Nicolas Heller, aka New York Nico. Look for an announcement soon!

The post Book Club Recap: Celebrating Joyous Creator Alexander Girard appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

At the first of two special PRINT Book Clubs this October, Debbie Millman and Steven Heller welcomed Cheryl D. Holmes-Miller to the stage to discuss her new book, Here: Where The Black Designers Are.

So, where are the black designers? As Holmes-Miller contends, “We’ve always been here. As long as Black people have been in this country, there have been Black designers. We go back to the slave artisans.” Here recognizes and celebrates this long history.

Holmes-Miller’s Here is part memoir, starting with her familial connection to art and design through her Danish and West Indian heritage and then her recognition of those threads as she began her design studies and scholarship.

The book is also part investigation, part urgent call for justice and recognition for Black designers, and part passing of the baton.

When asked why this book and why now, Holmes-Miller said, “I felt a deep sense of responsibility to put things in order, to document everything about the advocacy.”

When the elders go, so goes the library.

Cheryl D. Holmes-Miller, adapted from an African proverb.

A big part of Holmes-Miller’s journey of uplifting designers of color is to save the artifacts and history of Black graphic designers for future generations. She talked at length about her archives at Stanford, working with families to preserve this essential history—people like Dorothy Hayes, the co-curator of a 1970 exhibition about the Black artist in visual communication, whom Holmes-Miller features prominently in Here.

How do you encapsulate a life of advocacy? We only scratched the surface. During our conversation with Holmes-Miller, the engaged audience asked so many questions that our event ran long. We hope you’ll register here to watch the recording and check out some of the links below.

Here is an invaluable resource for graphic design professionals, teachers, and students. If you haven’t purchased your copy of Here: Where The Black Designers Are, get your copy here.

Header image © Olivier O. Kpognon.

Further reading:

“Be Better than the History I’ve Traveled:” A Chat with Cheryl D. Miller

Five Essential Books to Decolonize Your Studio, Library, and Classroom

Living History: Connecting the Threads Between Juneteenth and the Story of Black Graphic Designers

Black and White: A Portfolio of 40 Statements (1969)

Miller-Holmes’ 1987 article, Black Designers: Missing in Action

For more PRINT Book Club this month, join us this Thursday, October 24 at 4 PM ET for Let The Sun In, a new monograph on the life and work of Alexander Girard by Todd Oldham and Kiera Coffee. Register to attend here!

The post PRINT Book Club Recap with Designer, Writer, and Activist Cheryl D. Holmes-Miller appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Miller’s new historical memoir, Here: Where the Black Designers Are, is part of this topical resurgence with Cheryl Miller at the helm, but it’s also the story of a woman coming into her purpose, a reflection on all she’s learned, and a passing of the baton to the next generation. Steven Heller and Debbie Millman will discuss the book with Miller at our next PRINT Book Club on Thursday, October 17.

Miller and I chatted recently; excerpts from our conversation are below.

Advocacy and activism are just part of Cheryl Miller’s DNA. Growing up in Washington D.C. (her father, what she called a “highbrow negro politician”), Miller’s upbringing was somewhat insulated amidst the backdrop of Black nationalism, “I’m Black and I’m Proud,” and Nina Simone, her father scooting out the back door to attend the March on Washington. She was busy “dancing and graduating” when MLK was assassinated. “I was a kid,” Miller said, “I didn’t realize I was deep in a big part of history.”

Design was also a central theme of Miller’s childhood. Dansk flatware, ceramics, and jewelry filled her family home, carefully wrapped in local newspapers and shipped by her West Indian grandmother, a perfumier. The juxtaposition of the muted, minimalist, function-forward Scandinavian housewares with the newspapers’ Afro-Caribbean iconography and the family’s traditional, patterned textiles of the Danish West Indies (now the Virgin Islands), planted the seeds of design. However, she wouldn’t realize this until she landed in the commercial/graphic art program at MICA (Maryland Institute College of Art).

Often, we have to go back to move forward. We all have those foundational things that shape us, and if we’re listening and open to the world as adults, these things tend to bring us to our purpose. Talking about her childhood resonances made me curious. Miller’s career could’ve gone in a myriad of different directions. I wondered about those moments of change, choice, and struggle in Miller’s life—what, in hindsight, does she believe made the most significant impact?

One of those pivotal moments was the death of her father. Miller was in her first year of art school at RISD. “I went up to RISD to paint,” she says, utterly unaware of the conversations swirling around the school about the value of Black art, the ongoing civil and human rights violations, and the Vietnam War. Moving to Waspy New England from D.C. was a culture shock, and she felt the isolation of being one of very few African-American students. Her father would soon be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and would pass away ten months later. Miller moved closer to home, where she would study graphic design at MICA in Baltimore (the only regional school with a commercial art program). There, she met Leslie King-Hammond, a woman who would serve as her academic mentor (and still does).

Moving to New York with Phillip, the couple met in high school, was juncture number two. The move required her to leave her burgeoning broadcast design career in D.C. to start over essentially. Miller could’ve picked up the broadcast career in NYC without a beat—she had a tempting offer at ABC—but she felt the pull towards publication design. “I wanted the dream of what New York could be.” She contends that had she taken the ABC job (a job that, by any account, would’ve set her up for a successful and financially rewarding career), “I wouldn’t have made the contribution I did, had I taken it.” Miller decided to go to grad school instead, entering Pratt. Many of the things she’d seen at RISD and in Baltimore coalesced with what she was experiencing as a Black designer in NYC.

Being in New York really brought into light that Black designers were underexposed and under-educated in the field of graphic design. My community was suffering and I had something to say.

Cheryl D. Miller

On the cusp of finishing her graduate degree, her advisor threw her a gauntlet: instead of a graduate design project, Miller was to undertake a written thesis. She called King-Hammond, who encouraged her toward scholarship. “I started learning how to write history, about social justice. I started owning my skillset,” Miller said. “Leslie gave me the heart and the rigor for the work. The only way I was going to be able to make a difference was in the footnotes. Data and scholarship move the needle.”

Miller at the helm of her successful design studio, Cheryl D. Miller Design (1984-2000); In 1992, Miller was commissioned by NASA to create the poster for Dr. Mae Jeminson, America’s first African American woman astronaut.

I may not look radical, but I am.

Cheryl D. Miller

The third moment is our current moment, the resurgence of the social justice conversation in the wake of the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and far too many others. The next generation is asking many of the same questions as Miller and her peers have asked in their time, “There’s nothing new about this,” Miller contends. She readily admits that after fifty years in the business, she doesn’t expect that 3-4% representative number to jump up suddenly. “Where the Civil Rights Movement pushed the idea of equality, it didn’t mean that it would then be equitable,” she said. What is Miller’s prescription for what needs to happen now so our industry can bolster the equity of opportunity for Black creative talent? “We need to diversify design organization boards, we desperately need professors who are versed in a broader cultural perspective, we need more inclusive curricula, we need network affiliations that will offer us business opportunities, and we must carry on,” Miller said.

So, what would Miller like to dismantle in this time of sustained awareness and activism, her “Confederate statue”? “I want to take down the players who make you feel with intentionality that you’re not supposed to be here and the cult of the mid-century male designer,” Miller said. “It’s the imagery of my oppressor.”

But Miller is also an optimist, and she believes, as does Kamala Harris, “We’re not going back.” To close her book, Miller includes a quote from her commencement speech, an inspirational baton passing, to the RISD class of 2022:

Be better than the history I’ve traveled through and make your history far more inclusive and welcoming for everyone to encounter.

Cheryl D. Miller to RISD’s class of 2022

Cheryl Miller is still writing, researching, and advocating for recognizing and celebrating the Black designer and artisan’s contributions to society. Still, she’ll admit, “On this side of the story, I’ve done more finishing than starting.”

There is always more to do.

It is always essential to have people like Miller remind us to look and to see things as they are, not as they are curated for us.

I have only scratched the surface; there is much more to Cheryl Miller’s story. We hope you can join us next Thursday, October 17, for the first of two PRINT Book Club events this month!

The post “Be Better than the History I’ve Traveled,” a Chat with Cheryl D. Miller appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

October is a special month because we are bringing you not one, but TWO book club discussions.

One week after our talk with Cheryl D. Holmes-Miller about Here: Where The Black Designers Are, we’ll welcome photographer, fashion designer, and artist Todd Oldham and writer Kiera Coffee to discuss their new book Alexander Girard: Let The Sun In.

Register here to attend the live stream on Thursday, October 24.

The new monograph, by Todd Oldham and Kiera Coffee, covers the full breadth of the influential and much-loved designer’s life and career. It begins with Girard’s textile designs where he favored abstract forms and geometric patterns that moved effortlessly between chic, understated designs full of subtle color and texture, to intensely vivid designs that popped with super bright tones.

For many years he led the Herman Miller textile department where he worked with George Nelson and Charles & Ray Eames, and designed, colored, and drew hundreds of patterns, many of which are still popular and available today.

The book also covers the highly diverse range of work Girard undertook for commercial businesses, from Braniff (rebrand) to Detrola (radios and turntables) to La Fonda del Sol restaurant in New York (interior design).

For Girard, design (interior or otherwise) was never fixed; his ethos was one of constant change and allowing space for new ideas and seasons.

Art is only art when it is synonymous with living.

Alexander Girard

Todd Oldham is a photographer, author, and designer. Widely regarded as one of America’s top fashion designers in the 1990s, Oldham has since authored more than 20 books about artists and various design subjects, including Best of Nest (Phaidon, 2020).

Kiera Coffee is a New York-based writer and has spent more than a decade writing about design. She has worked for publications such as Interiors, Nest, and Martha Stewart Living amongst others.

Don’t miss our conversation with Oldham and Coffee on Thursday, October 24, at 4 PM ET! Register for the live discussion and buy your copy of Let The Sun In, here!

The post Todd Oldham & Kiera Coffee on Alexander Girard at Our Bonus October Book Club appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

October is a special month because we are bringing you two book events.

The first of these is happening on October 17, as the PRINT Book Club welcomes Cheryl D. Holmes-Miller. Debbie Millman and Steven Heller will lead a discussion about her new book, Here: Where The Black Designers Are.

HERE is part memoir, part investigation, and part urgent call for justice and recognition for Black designers, making it an invaluable resource for graphic design professionals, teachers, and students. Written by designer, writer, activist, and educator Cheryl D. Holmes-Miller, the book is a portrait of her life in advocacy and her journey to answer the question “Where are the Black designers?”

In HERE, Holmes-Miller traces her development as a designer and leader, beginning with her multiethnic family of origin. Her educational journey from Rhode Island School of Design to Maryland Institute College of Art, and finally, to Pratt, where her oft-cited Pratt thesis examining barriers to success for Black designers launched her activism. The book details her time at the helm of her namesake design studio working with clients such as NASA, Time Inc., and BET, as well as the story of her later critiques of the industry in the design press, most notably in her 1987 PRINT article: Black Designers: Missing in Action.

In the long struggle for equity and representation in the design professions, Cheryl D. Holmes-Miller’s voice has been loud and clear, not for years but for decades. Hers is a story with important lessons for all of us. We should all be grateful she is here to tell it.

Michael Bierut, partner at Pentagram

Learn more about Holmes-Miller in this short video for her recognition as a Design Visionary in Cooper-Hewitt’s 2021 National Design Awards.

Don’t miss our conversation with Cheryl D. Holmes-Miller on Thursday, October 17, at 4 PM ET! Register for the live discussion and buy your copy of Here, here!

The post Cheryl Miller’s Life of Advocacy at the Next PRINT Book Club appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

The accomplishment Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr. is most proud of, is that 6,000 Americans display his prints on their walls. There’s perhaps no better anecdote to describe Kennedy’s humble, generous, thoughtful spirit, on full display in the pages of the gorgeous monograph Citizen Printer and in our Book Club discussion.

If you missed our live conversation, this one was truly special and worth a watch!

Kennedy was exposed to letterpress printing as a ten-year-old in Louisiana with his Cub Scout troop. He rues that in our contemporary, digital culture, people don’t always have access to see how things are made. “I just watched him work,” Kennedy said, “The pride that he took in making these things, in workmanship, I picked that up.”

One doesn’t realize what effect an encounter will have on our lives.

Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr.

Kennedy talked about his career trajectory from a “one-time business bureaucrat,” to taking what he deemed the easy path: “I decided to do what made me happy.” He’s a practitioner of bad printing, a term he uses to describe his lack of formal training, his use of layering, and his self-described sloppy, hurried technique.

There are other followers of “bad printing,” notably the Dutch experimental artist and typographer HN Werkman. Kennedy, like Werkman, values the power and influence of printed matter, saying, “Printing is always a dangerous business. The dissemination of information is dangerous.”

Dangerous, and important. Kennedy’s manifesto is passionate and provocative: I PRINT NEGRO. “Those voices that have been suppressed, I have to use my press to put those voices out in the world,” he says.

He considers himself an agitator (and our culture is better served with his hard truths). Listening to Kennedy, one can’t help but absorb his palpable joy and contentment in his work.

I try to put ink on paper everyday. Then it’s a complete day.

Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr.

We’ve only scratched the surface of this incredible conversation. We hope you’ll register here to watch the recording. Psst: Kennedy offered a free postcard print to everyone who attended. You’ll have to watch it to find out how!

If you haven’t purchased your copy of Citizen Printer, order one here. Your design bookshelf will thank you!

Links & diversions from this live stream:

Kennedy refurbished an old building as his print shop, starting in 2016. Check out the photo album.

Clear some space in your studio. Posterhouse NYC has two Kennedy prints in the shop. We Tried to Warn You! (2023) and the Posterhouse 2021 anniversary print. Smaller in scale, Kennedy’s Sista Said postcard set at Letterform Archive offers words of wisdom from Black women in social justice and the arts.

Go see the gorgeous exhibition that accompanies this monograph at Letterform Archive in San Francisco! On view until January 2025, Citizen Printer showcases 150 type-driven artifacts produced throughout Kennedy’s career, including broadsides, maps, church fans, handbills, and oversized posters.

The post PRINT Book Club Recap with Joyful Agitator, Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr. appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Letterform Archive in San Francisco is currently showing a retrospective of Kennedy’s work in an exhibition entitled Citizen Printer, curated by Kelly Walters. On view through January, the show features over 150 type-driven artifacts created by Kennedy throughout his career and is accompanied by a monograph of the same name. This book has been selected for our September PRINT Book Club, which will feature a virtual conversation with Kennedy moderated by Steven Heller and Debbie Millman on Thursday, September 19, at 4 p.m. ET. Learn more and register to attend here!

As a primer to the Book Club, check out my conversation with Kennedy about his background and the exhibition below! (Conversation lightly edited for length and clarity.)

What first brought you to printmaking?

I didn’t enter into letterpress printing until about 1988, and prior to that, I’d worked in corporate America as a computer programmer. I discovered it in Williamsburg, Virginia. Williamsburg is a historical village based upon the 18th-century colonies, and they had an 18th-century print shop. I saw the docent doing a demonstration of letterpress printing, and then I just started doing it. I’ve been doing it ever since!

Before that, I had dabbled in calligraphy for a number of years, so I had a background in letters and letter forms. But for some reason, letterpress printing really resonated with me. I also had very minor experience in commercial printing at the university that I went to; my neighbor was the university printer, so occasionally, I would pop into his shop while he was working, and he would explain some of the rudimentary principles of printing, but I didn’t actively pursue it.

After you discovered letterpress printing in Williamsburg, how did you start printing yourself?

I was staying in Chicago at the time. There was an organization called Artist Book Works, a community-based book arts program that taught letterpress printing, bookbinding, paper decorations, and things of that nature. I took two of their letterpress courses, and then I was on my own.

I continued to work in corporate America, and then I was forced out by the downsizing of the company. I tried to set up a print shop at home in my basement, but I was very unsuccessful at it. So then, like any good person, when you don’t know what you’re doing, you go hide out in graduate school. So I did that. I got my MFA in graphic design from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

I had my own letterpress shop, even when I was in graduate school— I had it long before I went to graduate school. That’s one of the things that distinguished me from other students; they were using the equipment that was at the university, so once they left, they had to find equipment to use. But I already had my equipment—I had a Vandercook 4 and a Heidelberg 10×15 Platen—and so once I left, I could continue to pursue learning the skills and learning the craft. 

How did you acquire those two presses? 

When I started, the zenith of letterpress printing had waned, and offset printing had taken over, so people were getting rid of this equipment. But a school had one, and no printer wanted it, so they just offered it for free. I saw the notice, and then I went and picked it up. I paid about $5,000 for the Heidelberg from another printer, which was an exorbitant price at that time.

Do you still have them?

I have the Heidelberg, but I gave the 4 to a community print shop, and I have no idea what happened to it. 

What was the turning point that allowed you to go from your unsuccessful print shop in your basement to the successful artist you are now?

A complete abandonment of any goals. I just gave up and started printing because I liked printing and needed a modest income to support myself.  Everything else has been the result of me doing those two things: getting up every day and printing and enjoying it. I also tried to become an academic, but I found that to be too stressful and too confining.

How did you develop your signature printmaking style? When did that distinct aesthetic coalesce for you as an artist?

Well, to begin with, I don’t consider myself an artist. I consider myself a printer … kinda. I don’t even consider myself a printer; I consider myself a person with a printing press. Printers are very professional, careful, and sincere about what they do, and I just mess around. I have fun. And I’m fortunate that people see the merit in what I do and want to hire me and buy the things I make.

I don’t consider myself an artist. I consider myself a printer … kinda. I don’t even consider myself a printer; I consider myself a person with a printing press.

I was formally trained in what they call fine printing and book arts, but when I moved to Alabama, I transitioned to what I’m doing now. The reason I do what I do is out of necessity. I had a commission that I was working on, and I made a mistake, but I didn’t have any more paper, and I didn’t have money to buy it, so I had to do something with what I had. I decided to carefully print another layer over everything so you couldn’t see the mistake and put the corrected text on top. After I did that, I found it interesting how the letters overlapped in the shapes that were made, so I continued doing that. It became one of the styles that people recognize me for. 

Your activism is a central part of your printmaking practice, and you use your printmaking as a form of abolition. Where does your drive to communicate those ideas and themes in your work come from? 

It comes from my humanity. It is a part of the universal humanity in all of us: the humanity that cries out for justice, the humanity that cries out for liberation. We all have that within us. It is what makes us human.

I’ve always been that way. How do I separate my skin from the rest of my body? It’s just the nature of the beast that I am. I was raised in a family that, foremost, was truth, respect for individuals no matter what their so-called social class was, you do not infringe upon another person’s rights, and you show generosity and gratitude at all times.

Can you tell me a bit about your exhibition at Letterform Archive, Citizen Printer?

The exhibition includes works from as early as 1988, so it’s not just posters. It shows the artist books I’ve done and the wider swath of my work. It’s a retrospective, and that’s the first time this has ever been done. All of the exhibitions I’ve done to date have been site-specific, in that if an organization or a university or a museum asks me to do an exhibition, I will do it, provided that they identify grassroots organizations that need to have their message disseminated. I will then create promotional materials for those grassroots organizations to be exhibited as posters in the museum. Then after the exhibition is over, the museum gives those materials to the organizations to use as they see fit. 

I tell them, If you want me, then you have to do something for the community. And I don’t mean the United Way or the NAACP. I mean, grassroots organizations and small organizations that may not even have a 501(c)(3), but they’re out there helping their community.

The reason I do that is that traditionally, museums have excluded Black people, but now, they want Black people, brown people, those populations that they did not actively recruit in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, to come and take advantage of the services and the offerings of the museum. But when you’ve told somebody for 40 years that they can’t come in, you can’t just stay, “The door is open! Please come in!” You have to actively go and get them. 

So I tell the museums that that’s what this is about. It’s about them going to the community and saying, “We value what you do. We value your words. And we hope that you have a degree of trust with us, and you’ll come and visit us and utilize the services that we have here.”

It’s commendable that you’re using these opportunities to exhibit your work to uplift others. 

That’s basically the way that I do things. When I work with organizations or museums, it’s about expanding the audience of that institution and bringing in new people to experience the services that that institution has.

The post Letterpress Printer Amos Kennedy Jr. Makes Art As Statement appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

You’re in for a treat at our September PRINT Book Club. Letterpress printing legend, Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. will join hosts Debbie Millman and Steven Heller to talk about Citizen Printer. The new monograph, out this month by Letterform Archive, celebrates the Detroit-born artist’s life and work.

Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. is known for his type-driven messages of social justice and Black power, which he emblazoned on rhythmically layered and boldly inked posters. Now, with Citizen Printer, Kennedy’s inspiring story sits alongside his most important work, providing essential context for this contemporary Black artist. The book also acts as a call to action, giving readers tools for lifting their voices, too.

Citizen Printer features 800 reproductions representing the breadth of Kennedy’s posters and prints, plus original portraiture of the artist at work, a powerful artist statement, and a foreword by New York Times bestselling author Austin Kleon. The book’s dynamic, type-forward design was created by award-winning designers, Gail Anderson and Joe Newton.

Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr. (born 1948) was working a corporate job for AT&T when, at the age of 40, he discovered the art of letterpress printing on a tour of Colonial Williamsburg. Kennedy then devoted himself to the craft, earning an MFA at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and teaching at Indiana University. He now operates Kennedy Prints!, a communal letterpress center in Detroit. Borrowing words from social justice heroes Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and others, Kennedy layers bold statements on race, capitalism, history, and politics in exuberant, colorful, and one-of-a-kind posters. Kennedy has been featured in the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, and The Economist, and his work has been exhibited by the Library of Congress, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and other institutions throughout the US. He was the subject of a 2012 feature-length documentary, Proceed and Be Bold!

Don’t miss our conversation with Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. on Thursday, September 19, at 4 PM ET! Register for the live discussion and buy your copy of Citizen Printer.

The post Citizen Printer: Amos Kennedy Jr. at the Next PRINT Book Club appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Nine months into the pandemic, architect James Biber thought if he did something on Instagram every day, he’d know what day it was. So he started his timekeeping experiment by cataloging architects’ birthdays, eventually adding graphic designers and artists into the rotation. Michael Bierut saw what Biber was up to and thought it’d make great fodder for a book.

We couldn’t agree more—make room on your bookshelf for The Architect & Designer Birthday Book!

Biber was the book’s editorial conductor, and Bierut was the designer. Our discussion with the duo was insightful (the book features many women creators that were new to us) and oh-so-fun (tune in to learn what everyone really thought of Bob Gill).

The design is very simple, like Massimo Vignelli’s Audubon field guide series. The spreads are sparse with the focus on a visual at the top and the anecdotal and often relational history with the author.

Designers love working with constraints. This project was full of parameters that were fixed and could not be negotiated. It made it a fun project.

Michael Bierut

Part of the magic of the physical reading experience happens on the spreads, which sometimes mirror each other (like the Williams-Kent spread above). Sometimes, as in the Gehry-Savage spread below, they provide a visual contrast.

A particularly interesting discussion point centered around the bane of all publishers: the clearance of images. And, we’re talking IMAGES. Three hundred and sixty-six, in fact. A team of people worked tirelessly to find and obtain permission for the book’s visual content. When unable to clear for a variety of reasons from a good, old-fashioned ‘no’ to hearing crickets from the estates, Bierut got creative.

For Milton Glaser, they relied on an overhead shot of Times Square chairs arranged in the shape of Glaser’s famous logo from a personal friend. For Charles Addams (right), they opted for a pull quote. Their visual stand-in for Dan Flavin’s work is genius.

Register here to watch the recording.

Haven’t purchased your copy of The Architect & Designer Birthday Book? You can order one here.

The post Book Club Recap Biber & Bierut: Architects, Designers, and Images (So Many Images) appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

At the next PRINT Book Club, architect James Biber and designer Michael Bierut will join Debbie Millman and Steven Heller to discuss their new book, The Architect & Designer Birthday Book.

The book is described as a thoughtfully curated collection in a stunning package that recognizes and celebrates the birthdays of famous, infamous, and often overlooked designers and architects.

 It’s the design book you didn’t know you needed (and will not be able to live without).


Inspired by architect James Biber’s mid-pandemic Instagram project, in which he posted a birthday bio of a designer or architect (famous or less so) every day for a year, The Architect and Designer Birthday Book is filled with personal, opinionated, and humorous observations on fascinating figures past and present.


These anecdotal histories include:

• Architects from the Aaltos (Aino and Alvar) to Zumthor
• Rivals Bernini and Borromini
• Photographers Lee Miller, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Vivian Maier, Dody Weston Thompson, Margaret Morton, and Judith Turner
• Midcentury modernists Marcel Breuer, Walter Gropius, and Florence Knoll

The book’s author, James Biber is an architect and founder of the firm Biber Architects, based in New York. He has designed projects as diverse as the Harley-Davidson Museum in Milwaukee, the USA Pavilion at the 2015 Expo in Milan, Italy, the restoration of Richard Neutra’s Sten-Frenke house in Santa Monica, and, for one client, twelve houses across the country.

Michael Bierut, the book’s designer, is a graphic designer, design critic, and educator. A partner at Pentagram since 1990, Bierut has worked with clients such as The New York Times, Saks Fifth Avenue, The Robin Hood Foundation, MIT Media Lab, Mastercard, and the New York Jets. He also designed the ubiquitous H logo for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Don’t miss our conversation with James Biber and Michael Bierut on Thursday, August 22 at 4 PM ET! Register for the live discussion here, and buy your copy of The Architect and Designer Birthday Book right here.

The post Biber & Bierut Talk Birthdays at the Next PRINT Book Club appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

In Assembling Tomorrow, Scott Doorley and Carissa Carter explore the intangible forces that prevent us from anticipating just how fantastically technology can get out of control and what might be in store for us if we don’t change our tactics. If we ever needed this book, it is now, because our seemingly ceaseless capacity to create rubs up against our limited capacity to understand the impact of those creations.

Armondo Veve illustrated the book’s striking cover and interior. The dandelion on the cover might look organic at first glance, but you soon realize soon it has a mechanical quality. The ambiguity of the seeds —they could be taking flight or landing—draws your curiosity. “Dandelions don’t assemble, they disperse, and the dispersing is what leads to growth elsewhere (a different sort of assembling),” says Doorley.

Readers will enjoy the surreal nods and winks in Veve’s interior illustrations. His complex and layered approach perfectly accompanies mind-blowing expansion of the book’s main question: In the collapsing relationship between humans, technology, and the planet, what do we leave behind and what are we creating as we move along?

We’re in an era of runaway design, Carter says. It’s like a runaway train flying down the tracks. Often it will crash and cause destruction. Runaway design is invisible and we don’t know where it’s headed. Sometimes we won’t even know something has crashed, until we see the effects of the crash. This is where design fiction comes in.

Listen in to learn more about the authors’ concept of design fiction, its principles and processes, and some fascinating frameworks to consider. Carter explained that designers must use their imaginations as a way of putting ourselves in front of the train; to write versions of the future to see how we like them. In this future versioning, interesting questions arise, like:

• If you could resurrect a dead loved one, would you?
• Could you love an AI?
• Is our imagination our last private data pool?

We also delved into the importance of idea diversity, our socialized patterns, leaning away from monoculture, the startling rate at which we’re losing languages, and data’s relationship to power.

There was so much to this wide-ranging discussion with Carter and Doorley, more than we can illuminate here. We hope you’ll tune in, grab hold of a thread that connects with you, and see what questions rise to the surface.

Register here to watch the recording.

Haven’t purchased a copy of Assembling Tomorrow: A Guide to Designing a Thriving Future, From the Stanford d.school? You can order one here.

All images by Patrick Beaudouin.

The post July Book Club Recap: What Are We Creating as We Move Along? appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Not everyone can attend design school at Stanford. But that doesn’t mean we all can’t learn from some of its best creative minds.

At the next PRINT Book Club, Stanford’s Scott Doorley and Carissa Carter will join Debbie Millman and Steven Heller to discuss their new book, Assembling Tomorrow: A Guide to Designing a Thriving Future, From the Stanford d.school.

Within the book, Doorley and Carter explore the intangible forces that prevent us from anticipating just how fantastically technology can get out of control—and what might be in store for us if we don’t start using fresh tools and tactics. Despite our best intentions, the most transformative innovations tend to have consequences we can’t always predict. From the effects of social media to the uncertainty of AI and the consequences of climate change, the outcomes of our creations ripple across our lives. Time and again, our seemingly ceaseless capacity to create rubs up against our limited capacity to understand our impact.

Assembling Tomorrow explores how to use readily accessible tools to mend the mistakes of the past and shape our future for the better. Mixed throughout are short pieces of speculative fiction that imagine the future as if it has already happened, and consider the past with a critical yet hopeful eye so that all of us—as designers of our own futures—can create a better world for generations to come.

About the Authors:

Scott Doorley is a writer, designer, and creative director at the Stanford d.school. He co-wrote Make Space: How to Set the Stage for Creative Collaboration and teaches courses in design communication. His work has been featured in museums from San Jose to Helsinki, and in publications such as Architecture + Urbanism and The New York Times.

Carissa Carter is a designer, geoscientist, and the academic director of the Stanford d.school. She’s the author of The Secret Language of Maps: How to Tell Visual Stories With Data and teaches design courses on emerging technologies, climate change, and data visualization. Her work on designing with machine learning and blockchain has earned multiple honors, including Fast Company Innovation and Core 77 design awards.

Don’t miss our conversation with Doorley and Carter, hosted by Debbie Millman and Steven Heller, on Wednesday, July 24, at 4 p.m. ET! Register for the live discussion here, and buy your copy of Assembling Tomorrow right here.

The post July Book Club: Stanford d.school on How to Design a Thriving Future appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Until the launch of Wonder City of the World (book and exhibition), there had never been an exhibition about New York City travel posters. We found this hard to believe! In fact, no one has written a book about them, either. Not even PRINT’s prolific design history hunter, Steven Heller. Poster House wanted to rectify this.

So, Nicholas Lowry (Poster House board member, writer, and antiques expert—you may know his face from Antiques Roadshow) and Angelina Lippert (chief curator for Poster House) set out to design an exhibition on this poster design genre. Abrams then proposed a book. The sheer amount of posters worthy of our discussion and appreciation wouldn’t fit on Poster House’s walls—the book became a great vehicle to explore this fascinating slice of design history.

The book’s name comes from one of the many monikers given to New York City throughout its history as a destination: for immigrants seeking better lives, for droves coming to the 1939 World’s Fair, for the thousands of tourists who’ve flocked to the city’s sights for centuries. The original name for the exhibition was “Mythmaking and the Metropolis”—we love this, for the record!—however, the book’s editor wanted to simplify and so Wonder City, the book, was born.

Wonder is appropriate. The collection offers an idealized portrait of New York City, accompanied by essays on the posters’ design, the artists (if known; most are not), and the artists’ representation of the city. Our discussion included all kinds of fun facts and little-known details about New York and the history of advertising the city all over the globe. The topic proved to be the ultimate rabbit hole for Lowry.

I haven’t met a rabbit hole I haven’t wanted to jump down.

Nicholas Lowry, writer and curator

If you’d like to go down your own rabbit hole on this topic, register here to watch the recording of our fascinating discussion with Lowry and Lippert.

Haven’t purchased a copy of Wonder City of the World: New York Travel Posters? You can order one here.

If you are in New York, visit the Poster House exhibition, which features a selection of these incredible artifacts of design history. Wonder City of the World is on view until September 8. Poster House’s upcoming exhibitions include everything from Lester Beall to the London Underground to the Munich Olympics, the NYC subway, Nike, and more. Learn more at posterhouse.org.

See you next month!

The post Mythmaking and the Metropolis: Book Club Recap with Nicholas Lowry & Angelina Lippert appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

At our next PRINT Book Club, Debbie Millman and Steven Heller will chat with PBS’s Antiques Roadshow star, antiques expert, and author Dr. Nicholas D. Lowry alongside Poster House Chief Curator & Director of Content Angelina Lippert. Our discussion will center around Wonder City of the World: New York City Travel Posters, the book accompanying the Poster House exhibition of the same name, on view until September 8.

Wonder City of the World lavishly illustrates 100 years of how New York City was sold to the world with graphic design. Historic posters feature New York City’s iconic skyline, unique architecture, and the charms of its neighborhoods, from Harlem to Coney Island. The art book captures the ever-changing, idealized view of the city alongside essays from Lowry, Lippert, and a host of writers and design experts including Tim Medlund, Catherine Bindman, Colette Gaiter, Jon Key, Jennifer Rittner, and Michele Washington.

Nicholas D. Lowry, (Nicho) was born in New York City into a family of antiquarian book dealers. He is President and Principal Auctioneer of Swann Auction Galleries. He is also the Director of Swann’s Vintage Posters Department. For three decades, Lowry has served as the vintage poster appraiser on the popular PBS television show Antiques Roadshow. He sits on the Advisory Board of Poster House museum and wrote and curated the museum’s current show, “New York – Wonder City of the World.”

Angelina Lippert is the Chief Curator and Director of Content of Poster House. She is the author of The Art Deco Poster and co-author of Wonder City of the World: New York City Travel Posters, and has lectured at SVA, The Cooper Union, NYU, Pratt, the New York Times, and Sotheby’s Institute of Art. She was a recipient of the Emily Hall Tremaine Journalism Fellowship for Curator through Hyperallergic, and has written for The Muse by the Clio Awards as well as the New York Journal of Books.

Don’t miss our conversation with Lowry and Lippert, hosted by Debbie Millman and Steven Heller, on Thursday, June 20 at 4 PM ET! Register for the live stream discussion and buy your copy of Wonder City of the World: New York City Travel Posters.

The post June Book Club with Poster House: NYC, Wonder City appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

We are lucky that Warren Lehrer didn’t heed his Queens College Art School drawing instructor’s advice that words and images operate in two different languages and hemispheres of the brain, so don’t combine them. Instead, Lehrer took from that his mission in life.

He doesn’t see himself as a designer or author in the traditional sense. But with his background in visual arts, words on the page have always married with the content. Steven Heller described Lehrer’s aptitude as performative design—creating stages for text to play.

And what gorgeous stages Jericho’s Daughter and Riveted in the Word are! The double release was serendipitous rather than planned. Both projects are based on short stories, have bifurcated formats (that dichotomy again), are led by visuals, and illuminate women whose lives have been torn apart and have to start over from scratch.

Our conversation was full of design geekery, like Do Si Do bindings, translating the reading experience into coding language, and storyboarding. There was also a rich discussion of the collaboration behind both books: Lehrer’s process with artist Sharon Horvath for Jericho’s Daughter and how words came together with music (composer Andrew Griffin) in the interface (designed by creative technologist  Artemio Morales) in Riveted in the Word.

Both books are available for presale. Riveted in the Word is sold through the Apple App Store (searchable under ‘book apps’). You can purchase Jericho’s Daughter through Earsay Publishing.

There are a bunch of upcoming book launch events (more info on Warren Lehrer’s website). If you are in NYC, you are invited to the May 31 double book launch at the Center for Book Arts.

Register here to watch the entire discussion.

For more, listen to Debbie’s 2019 Design Matters interview with Warren Lehrer.

The post Book Club Recap with Warren Lehrer: A Multimedia Feast of Words & Pictures appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

It’s a two-fer at our next PRINT Book Club! Warren Lehrer, winner of the Ladislav Sutnar Prize for his pioneering work and lifetime achievement in Visual Literature and Design, will be on hand to preview two new books: the beautifully conceived Jericho’s Daughter and Riveted in the Word, a new kind of ebook.

Debbie Millman and Steven Heller will chat with Lehrer about these gorgeous stories, both told with bifurcated structures revealing lives torn apart and beginning anew.

Jericho’s Daughter is an anti-war, feminist reimagining of the biblical tale of Rahab, the Canaanite “harlot” who lived in a mud hut inside the outer brick wall of Jericho. One of only a few characters who appear in the Old and New Testaments, Rahab is lauded by both Jews and Christians as a reformed sinner and a symbol of faith. Lehrer places Rahab center stage, revealing a very different perspective of the enigmatic character and the meaning of her story. The beautifully produced, full-color book is illuminated with original images and objects created by Sharon Horvath. Given the horrific situation in Israel and Gaza, Rahab’s call to end the cycle of war and death takes on important urgency. A percentage of the proceeds from Jericho’s Daughter will go to Women Wage Peace, the largest grassroots peace movement in Israel.

EarSay is publishing Jericho’s Daughter simultaneously with Lehrer’s first fully electronic book, Riveted in the Word, inspired by the true story of a writer’s hard-fought battle to regain language after a devastating stroke. Written and designed by Warren Lehrer, this multimedia book app places the reader inside the mind of a retired history professor as she recalls her journey with Broca Aphasia. The custom interface toggles between columns of text that readers navigate at their own pace, and animated sections that evoke gaps between perceptions (thoughts, memories, desires) and the words needed to communicate. This deeply moving story about overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles is told in a dynamic new way, with kinetic typography and an original soundtrack by composer, multi-instrumentalist Andrew Griffin, programmed by Artemio Morales.

Warren Lehrer is a writer, lecturer, publisher, and speaker. His essays on design authorship, visual literature, and design education have been widely reproduced. He has been written about in scores of books and in many feature articles and reviews in print and broadcast media. Lehrer is a founding faculty member of the Designer As Author & Entrepreneur MFA program at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in NYC, and Professor Emeritus at the School of Art+Design at Purchase College, SUNY, where he Chaired the Design program for many years.

Over the last few years, Lehrer has been setting stories and text into animation, video, and interactive media. He’s also been collaborating with select poets visualizing their writing into books, animation, and live performance events.

Don’t miss our conversation with Warren Lehrer on Thursday, May 16 at 4 PM ET. Register for the live-stream discussion. Links to buy Jericho’s Daughter and Riveted in the Word coming soon!

The post PRINT Book Club: Warren Lehrer Previews Two Visually Stunning Titles appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

The first edition of Thinking with Type was published in 2004. Since then, it has remained a must-have resource for anyone passionate about typography and design. The latest edition features new and additional voices, examples and principles, and a wider array of typefaces.

A clear advocate for the culture of yes, Lupton talks about the ever-evolving field of typography from a deep historical appreciation to our current cultural context. She also shares some keen insights about aesthetics, why hanging punctuation marks look so much better than unstyled punctuation mixing typefaces, and the process of mixing typefaces to complement one another like wine and cheese.

If you missed the live stream and are thirsty for more type talk, you can register here to watch the discussion.

Don’t own a copy of Thinking with Type? You can order one here.

The post From Canon to Context: Book Club Recap with Ellen Lupton appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

At our next PRINT Book Club, Debbie Millman and Steven Heller will chat with beloved design educator Ellen Lupton about the new edition of her seminal book, Thinking With Type.

Lupton’s bestselling book is an essential guide to using typography in visual communication for everyone: designers, writers, editors, students, anyone who works with words on page or screen, and enthusiasts of type and lettering. Now in it’s third edition (March 2024), Thinking With Type has been expanded to include:

• More fonts: old fonts, new fonts, weird fonts, libre fonts, Google fonts, Adobe fonts, fonts from independent foundries, and fonts and lettering by women and BIPOC designers
• Introductions to diverse writing systems, contributed by expert typographers from around the world
• Demonstrations of basic design principles, such as visual balance, Gestalt grouping, and responsive layout
• Current approaches to typeface design, including, variable fonts and optical sizes and tips for readability, legibility, and accessibility
• Stunning reproductions from the Letterform Archive

Thinking with Type is to typography what Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time is to physics.

I Love Typography

Ellen Lupton is a designer, writer, and educator. In addition to Thinking With Type, her other books include Design Is Storytelling, Graphic Design Thinking, Health Design Thinking, and Extra Bold: A Feminist, Inclusive, Anti-Racist, Nonbinary Field Guide for Graphic Designers. She teaches in the Graphic Design MFA program at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore (MICA), where she serves as the Betty Cooke and William O. Steinmetz Design Chair. She is Curator Emerita at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City, where her exhibitions included Herbert Bayer: Bauhaus Master and The Senses: Design Beyond Vision.

Don’t miss our conversation with Ellen Lupton, hosted by Debbie Millman and Steven Heller, on Thursday, April 25 at 4 PM ET! Register for the live stream discussion and visit our Bookshop.org shop to buy your copy of Thinking With Type.

The post For the Love of Type! Ellen Lupton’s at our April PRINT Book Club appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Allen Ginsberg was one of the foremost minds of his generation. He was also a prolific collector. From his extensive archives at Standford, Pat Thomas worked with Peter Hale of Ginsberg’s estate to pull nearly ten thousand items for consideration. From this, Thomas narrowed it to 1,000 items encompassing Material Wealth: Mining the Personal Archive of Allen Ginsberg.

The three most remarkable pieces, according to Thomas, are a satire of Ginsberg’s Howl written by screenwriter Terry Southern (below); a transcript of a call between Ginsberg and Henry Kissinger about ending the war in Vietnam, one in which the famously exhibitionist Ginsberg suggests they discuss the issue naked on national television (below); and (not pictured), a letter from the American Nazi Party to Ginsberg about all the reasons they wanted to assassinate him: likely a “commie,” possibly gay, definitely a Jew.

The book is a collection of 600,000 words and 300 pages, yet it is also light (uncoated paper!). Andy Outis took us through the myriad of design decisions that give this book its singular aesthetics. He began the project by reading Howl aloud to internalize it (during the pandemic). Outis leaned heavily on 90s graphic design, specifically deconstruction, for inspiration in creating a book that was more than just the sum of its artifacts—the unique open spine, the leveraging of low-resolution scans with all the original scratches, dirt, and flaws, and the use of color. Outis also typeset the accompanying text on an Underwood 315 typewriter. From there, he scanned it, making the book’s pages look very much like archival material they hold.

Ginsberg was neither conventional nor conservative. So, Andy went for it …
It’s a work of art.

Pat Thomas on collaborating with Andy Outis, designer of Material Wealth

For those who find the intersection of history fascinating, Thomas has a beautiful sentiment about this very thing as it relates to Allen Ginsberg, Stonewall, and The Beatles about 38 minutes in. You’ll also hear a surprising admission from Steven Heller, who, as a young Ginsberg fan, stole a copy of Howl from Doubleday Book Shop (eventually returning it to the shelves after he read it).

Our conversation wound from music to poetry to design to politics to culture, so there’s something for everyone. Register here to watch the discussion.

Don’t own a copy of Material Wealth: Mining the Personal Archive of Allen Ginsberg? You can order one here.

The post The Material is the Meta Narrative: Book Club Recap with Pat Thomas & Andy Outis appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

At our next PRINT Book Club, Debbie Millman and Steven Heller will discuss the book, Material Wealth: Mining the Personal Archive of Allen Ginsberg with writer Pat Thomas and designer Andy Outis.

Pat Thomas is an author, historian, and archival music producer (and liner-note writer). His books have enlightened many on the cultural and musical zeitgeist of the sixties and seventies, with topics ranging from the Black Panthers to Jerry Rubin, photographer Les McCann, Lou Reed, Jack Kerouac, and more.

His latest book takes us through the personal archives of poet, activist, and prolific collector Allen Ginsberg, promising “an unprecedented look inside one of the most prolific poets and agitators of cultural mores of the 20th century.“

“A poster for Patti Smith’s first-ever poetry reading. Correspondence from Allen’s stint as literary agent for William S. Burroughs and Herbert Huncke. Yippie manifestos from Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman, and John Sinclair of the MC5. A ticket for a 1974 concert by Bob Dylan & The Band (with Yoko Ono’s phone number scribbled on the back). Posters documenting early Beat Generation readings in 1950s San Francisco as well as later ones capturing the 1960s Haight-Ashbury Hippie era.“

These are just some of the treasures in the book, alongside photographs and ephemera in what is a “visual annotated compendium that reveals one of the unparalleled minds of his generation.”

Andy Outis, Material Wealth‘s designer, began his creative journey as a graffiti artist. Before founding his own practice, Shift7.Studio, Outis led the in-house agency for a group of national media brands and was the Creative Director of events and marketing at New York Media, where he led the team responsible for brand management and revenue-driving creative for New York magazine and its websites, including Vulture and The Cut.

Don’t miss our conversation with Pat Thomas and Andy Outis, hosted by Debbie Millman and Steven Heller, on Thursday, March 28 at 4 PM ET! Register for the live stream discussion and buy your copy of Material Wealth.

The post Mine Allen Ginsberg’s Archive with Pat Thomas & Andy Outis at our Next PRINT Book Club appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

The award-winning New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast has been places … a conversation with Henry Kissinger at the dentist … cradling an adoring Danny Devito like a baby … a terrifying convenience store named Stop and Chop … something about her mother finding O.J. Simpson’s glove and renting it out for parties. All of these dreams are fodder for her real-life cartoons.

I’m very happy to wake up and ask, where did I go last night?

Roz Chast

In a hilarious conversation with Debbie Millman and Steven Heller, Chast discusses her start in cartooning, why she sent in her work to the New Yorker (her parents subscribed), and why she loves cartoons and to-do lists, sometimes one-in-the-same (they are shorthand for conveying bigger things).

The illustrator talks about her process and why/when she draws on both paper and her iPad. Chast also offers pearls of wisdom from her more than 50 years as an artist, particularly when it comes to dealing with rejection and creative block.

If you missed the live stream, register here to watch the discussion.

Don’t own a copy of I Must Be Dreaming? You can order one here.

The post Dream Inspires Cartoon, Life Imitates Cartoon: Book Club Recap with Roz Chast appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

At our next PRINT Book Club, Roz Chast will join Debbie Millman and Steven Heller to discuss her new graphic novel, I Must Be Dreaming. Since its release in October, the book has been named:

A New Yorker Best Book of the Year


A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice


A Washington Post Best Graphic Book of the Year

Need more convincing?

In I Must Be Dreaming, the New York Times bestselling, award-winning New Yorker cartoonist (check out the recent issue’s cover) takes us into the surreal realms of her mind, to help us untangle the mystery of our dreams and nightmares.

Roz Chast continues what the Ancient Greeks, modern seers, Freud, Jung, neurologists, poets, artists, shamans have all tried: to decipher the mysterious phenomena of dreams. Chast illustrates her own dream world, a place that is sometimes creepy but always hilarious, accompanied by an illustrated tour through “Dream-Theory Land” guided by insights from poets, philosophers, and psychoanalysts alike. Illuminating, surprising, funny, and often profound, I Must Be Dreaming explores Roz Chast’s newest subject of fascination―and promises to make it yours, too.

It perhaps comes as no surprise that the cartoonist Roz Chast―into whose unique and zany mind readers of The New Yorker have peeked, via her instantly recognizable, beloved cartoons―has some weird dreams. Now, fans can see these dreams illustrated, along with an exploration into the history and meaning of dreams as we know them.

The New Yorker, “Best Books of the Year”

Don’t miss our conversation with Roz Chast, hosted by Debbie Millman and Steven Heller, on Thursday, February 15 at 4 PM ET! Register for the live stream discussion and buy your copy of I Must Be Dreaming.

The post Roz Chast Explores the Mystery of Dreams at Our Next PRINT Book Club appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Curiosity is fuel for writer, design critic, and thinker Rick Poynor. He feels a tug toward an issue, a question, or a dilemma, and he explores and tests his ideas systematically through the process of writing. Poynor’s background is in art history and he’s been writing about the broader visual culture for decades at publications such as Blueprint, Eye Magazine (a publication he co-founded), and PRINT. He’s written and contributed to more books than will fit on your nightstand.

The 46 essays in his latest book, Why Graphic Culture Matters, are essential reading.

Debbie Millman’s and Steven Heller’s conversation with Poynor lobbed some meaty philosophical considerations into the air. The first is the vital and disappearing culture of critical writing about design. Poynor believes we should seek out more than a surface-level showcase of our output—that the conversation around graphic design (as part of visual culture, which includes art and film) should be the roots, sources, and cultural reflections behind the work (work, here, meaning not just our commercial deliverables).

This led nicely into the second big topic of the day: that design shouldn’t only be a net to catch consumers. Our favorite part of the discussion came when Poynor talked candidly about the marketization and bland-ification of design—of our trying to find appeal across the maximum audience.

Why must [graphic design] be the boring craft? Our culture isn’t!

If you missed the live stream, register here to watch the discussion unfold.

Don’t own a copy of Why Graphic Culture Matters? You can order one here.

The post Why (Critical Thought About) Graphic Culture Matters: PRINT Book Club Recap with Rick Poynor appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Start the new year with a thoughtful conversation on the state of design at our next PRINT Book Club! Design critic Rick Poynor will join Debbie Millman and Steven Heller to discuss his book, Why Graphic Culture Matters.

Why Graphic Culture Matters is a collection of 46 essays about graphic design and visual communication, written by Poynor, a non-designer deeply immersed in the practice of graphic communication. Many of these essays – speculative, questioning, sometimes controversial – were first published in PRINT (he was a columnist for 17 years).

What a fantastic, compulsive book. There’s just so much in it! Every page opens up new rabbit holes for me to go down.

Brian Eno

Poynor covers such topics as the commercial takeover of design, design criticism and history, the interplay of word and image, design celebrity, the enduring intimacy between art and design, and whether graphic design is still an apt term for what graphic communicators do.

Don’t miss this sure-to-be provocative conversation on Thursday, January 18 at 4 PM ET! Register for the live stream discussion and buy your copy of Why Graphic Culture Matters.

Images courtesy of Rick Poynor

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For Edel Rodriguez politics is personal. As a child, he and his family fled Castro’s Cuba as part of the Mariel boatlift. Once settled in Miami, a young Rodriguez became fascinated with the Bill of Rights in school. His first adult job was working the New York Times op-ed page. As an illustrator, Rodriguez has always been in the business of political commentary, speaking truth to power through his art.

His truth unfolds in Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey.

The Cuban dictatorship was great about sending the ‘right’ kind of propaganda out into the world. I hope my book dispels some of this. A ‘hero’ like Che can be someone else’s oppressor.

Edel Rodriguez

Debbie Millman’s and Steven Heller’s recent conversation with Rodriguez covered a lot of ground, from how he devised Worm’s visual language to the reclaiming of a derogatory term as the title to the deeper philosophical reasons for why this book (and why now). Rodriguez also delves into the parallels between the Cuban Revolution and the January 6th insurrection. As for a future film adaptation (we’re calling it here!), he’d cast Pedro Pascale as his father.

If you missed the livestream, register here to watch the episode.

Don’t own a copy of Worm? You can order one here.

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When challenged by his publisher to articulate 100 branding principles—it had to be one hundred (the book is part of a series with the number in the title, after all)—Mark Kingsley didn’t think it was possible. Two years later, with momentum behind him, Kingsley had done it.

Rather than principles, Kingsley thinks of the 100 nuggets in Universal Principles of Branding more as ethical admonishments, conversation starters, and what-ifs. And the “universal” banner? Kingsley and the publisher agreed to disagree. Because if you do brand work, you know tactics aren’t always the answer. Dogma doesn’t fly in a field that moves at the speed of culture.

Step off your position and just listen. Communication is THE METHOD.

Mark Kingsley

Debbie Millman’s and Steve Heller’s “brain stretching” conversation with Mark Kingsley often veered into philosophical territory, and we loved every minute of it. They covered Dapper Dan, The Simpsons, ‘Martha’ tables, Catholic propaganda, AI, and well, ‘yada yada.’ They might also have distilled down the difference between IDENTITY and BRAND. If you missed it, register here to watch the episode.

Don’t own a copy of Kingsley’s book? You can order one here.

We look forward to seeing you at our next PRINT Book Club with Edel Rodriguez on December 12.

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Mark your calendars for our next PRINT Book Club. Artist and illustrator Edel Rodriguez, creator of over 200 magazine covers for publications such as The New Yorker, TIME, Newsweek, and Der Spiegel, will discuss his latest book with Debbie Millman and Steven Heller.

Rodriguez’s work is singular, striking, and often controversial and his graphic memoir, Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey, is a stunning example. Rodriguez illustrates the story of his childhood in Cuba and his family’s decision in 1980 to join a hazardous flotilla of refugees, the Mariel boatlift. He uses his own experiences to capture what it’s like to grow up under an authoritarian government and sound an alarm for the future.

A sharply observed document of totalitarianism and its discontents—this gifted artist in particular.

Kirkus Reviews

Through vivid, stirring art, Worm tells a story of a Cold War boyhood, a family’s exile, and their tenacious longing for those they left behind. It also recounts the coming-of-age of an artist and activist who, witnessing America’s turn from democracy to extremism, struggles to differentiate his adoptive country from the dictatorship he fled. Confronting questions of patriotism and the liminal nature of belonging, Edel Rodriguez ultimately celebrates the maligned and overlooked immigrants who guard and invigorate American freedom.

Don’t miss this exciting talk on Tuesday, December 12 at 4 PM ET! Register for the livestream discussion and buy Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey by Edel Rodriguez.

Banner image: illustration from Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey. © Edel Rodriguez

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For PRINT’s next livestream Book Club, Mark Kingsley will be in conversation with Debbie Millman and Steven Heller about his new book, Universal Principles of Branding. Register for our livestream and buy the book, here.

In Universal Principles of Branding, author Mark Kingsley deftly deconstructs the discipline of branding with intelligence, candor and a much-needed, remarkably original voice. In doing so, Kingsley has accomplished the impossible: he has created a book that finally—at long last—provides a confident, crystal clear, no-holes barred overview of what it really takes to create, define, build and deliver a brand.

Debbie Millman

Universal Principles of Branding presents 100 concepts, theories, and guidelines that are critical for defining, building, and delivering brands today.

 Richly illustrated and easy to navigate, this comprehensive reference pairs clear explanations of each principle with visual examples of it applied in practice. By considering these concepts and examples, you can learn to make more informed, and ultimately better, branding decisions.



Features diverse principles such as:

• Authenticity
• Social Responsibility
• World Building
• Gatekeepers
• Rituals and routine

Don’t miss this exciting talk on Thursday, November 30 at 4 PM ET! Register for the live stream and buy Kingsley’s book.

And stay tuned for information about the final PRINT Book Club of 2023, coming up on December 12!

The post Talk Branding Craft with Mark Kingsley at Our Next PRINT Book Club appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Is Stefan Sagmeister the eternal optimist? Yes. But he believes that optimism makes rational sense. Many things in our current moment need fixing. Sagmeister’s philosophy and the thesis of his new book Now Is Better is that we have a much better chance of solving them from a headspace of progress and positivity than we do if we let ourselves succumb to doom and gloom.

The challenge of our time: figuring out how to make positive news interesting.

Stefan Sagmeister

In this conversation with Debbie Millman and Steven Heller, Sagmeister discussed the inspiration behind his new book, Now Is Better. It’s been generations in the making. The artwork foundation for the book’s data visualizations came from the leftovers of Sagmeister’s great-great grandparents’ antique store, sourced in his parents’ attic. That 18th- and 19th-century paintings serve as the canvas for contemporary data is a metaphorical and literal interpretation of his thesis. When Sagmeister compares his life to his great-great grandparents, the data comes alive in a personal way alongside the personal history of his family.

For Sagmeister, Now Is Better isn’t just a familial story. It’s a global story told with cold, complex data about improvements in the lives of humans over the past 100 to 200 years. The art is there to provide a visual bridge. People can appreciate the painting for its aesthetics, but the data story is included on the back if people are curious about it.

Despite data telling us that things are better now than ever in human history, you might be skeptical, given the news cycle.

If I’m in a good mood, I’m more useful to my community.

Stefan Sagmeister

What’s the cure for pessimism? You must override your amygdala, that part of our brain wired to latch onto perceived threats and keep us safe. Seeking the positive in an ocean of negative is hard work. One of Sagmeister’s favorite spots on the internet to send his amygdala packing is David Byrne’s Instagram editorial project @reasonstobecheerful.

If we can let in the positive, as designers and creatives, we’ll be able to put all of our might into working on solutions for the pressing challenges of our day.

Here are ten reasons for optimism from Now Is Better.

Don’t own a copy of Sagmeister’s book? You can order one here.

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For PRINT’s next livestream Book Club, Stefan Sagmeister will be in conversation with Debbie Millman and Steven Heller about his new book, Now is Better.

Now is Better, as described by Phaidon:

Stefan Sagmeister’s newest project encourages long-term thinking and reminds us that many things in the world are improving. Sagmeister has created a book that looks at the state of the world today, illuminating, through collected data, how far we’ve come, and encouraging us to think about where we can go from here. Statistics are vividly brought to life, as numbers are transformed into graphs, inlaid into nineteenth-century paintings, embroidered canvases, lenticular prints, and hand-painted water glasses. The book includes a foreword from psychologist and leading authority on language and the mind, Steven Pinker; a featured essay by graphic designer and historian Steven Heller; and a conversation between Sagmeister and Hans Ulrich Obrist, curator and artistic director of Serpentine Galleries in London and will appeal to all visually minded readers, providing a positive reaction to the tumultuous news cycle of recent years. Now is Better is an intriguing and thoughtful visual meditation on our daily lives.

Don’t miss this exciting talk on Wednesday, October 25 at 4 PM ET! Register for the livestream and buy Sagmeister’s book.

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Ever wonder what connects Dada to TikTok? Neville Brody does. His thoughts on this and more will expand your mind.

As a designer with origins borne in industrial and avant-garde music, it’s no surprise that Neville likens graphic design to jazz: an complex environment of improvisation enabled by the mastery of techniques and tools. There’s also no better metaphor than jazz about our discussion of his latest monograph.

Moderated by Debbie Millman and Steven Heller, our fascinating conversation with Neville bounced from the reasons for the thirty-year gap between his last monograph and The Graphic Language of Neville Brody 3 (“NB3”), to the six-year process of curating the work that went into this book, to why the visuals occupy the pages the way they do.

Neville was candid about AI’s role in the design process and why we must work towards reclaiming open digital spaces. We also learned exactly what was said in his tense-yet-clarifying interview with Steve Jobs.

Complex ideas don’t tend to have big audiences, but big ideas come from complex processes.

Neville Brody on why complex models are necessary

Be challenged, be inspired, and be wowed by watching the full interview here. If you haven’t yet purchased your copy of Neville’s incredible new book, The Graphic Language of Neville Brody 3, buy it here.

Our next PRINT Book Club will be a conversation with another design legend. Stay tuned for details!

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For PRINT’s next livestream Book Club, Neville Brody will be in conversation with Debbie Millman and Steven Heller about his third monograph, The Graphic Language of Neville Brody 3, released earlier this year. Picking up where his 1994 second edition left off, Brody’s collaboration with writer and designer Adrian Shaughnessy is essential reading if you want to understand the evolution of design over the last 30 years.

For over four decades, this seminal designer, typographer, and brand strategist has received global acclaim for his ‘visual language,’ experimentation, and knack for pushing creative boundaries in all aspects of his practice.

Steven Heller called The Graphic Language of Neville Brody 3 an “ongoing history featuring work by one of the most innovative designers of Century 21.” Read his Daily Heller write-up and Angela Riechers’ review for a sneak preview, and don’t miss this exciting talk on Thursday, September 14 at 3 PM ET! Register for the call here and buy Brody’s book here.

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Design offers so much more than an aesthetically pleasing logo, banner, or beautification add-on after the heavy lifting has been accomplished. In Reimagining Design, Kevin Bethune shows how design provides a unique angle on problem-solving and how it can be leveraged strategically to cultivate innovation and anchor multidisciplinary teamwork.

In the process, he describes his journey as a Black professional in corporate America, revealing the power of transformative design, multidisciplinary leaps, and diversity. Bethune, who began as an engineer at Westinghouse, moved on to Nike (where he designed Air Jordans), and now works as a sought-after consultant on design and innovation, showing how design can transform both individual lives and organizations.

In Bethune’s account, diversity, equity, and inclusion emerge as recurring themes. He shows how, as we leverage design for innovation, we also need to consider the broader ecological implications of our decisions and acknowledge the threads of systemic injustice in order to realize positive change. His book is for anyone who has felt like the “other,” as well as for allies who want to encourage anti-racist, anti-sexist, and anti-ageist behaviors in the workplace. Design transformation takes leadership: leaders who do not act as gatekeepers but, with agility and nimbleness, build teams that mirror the marketplace.

Design in harmony with other disciplines can be incredibly powerful, and multidisciplinary team collaboration is the foundation of future innovation. With insight and compassion, Bethune provides a framework for bringing this to life.

Don’t yet own this book? Order your copy now and support small bookshops.

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Milton Glaser’s designs changed the way we see the world.

Think you’ve seen all of Milton Glaser’s work? Even his archivist, Beth Kleber, was surprised while creating this book with Mirko Ilic and Steven Heller. In our latest PRINT Book Club, Debbie Millman interviewed Milton Glaser: POP authors Steven Heller, Mirko Ilic, & Beth Kleber. Watch their conversation on-demand here.

From 1954, when he co-founded the legendary Push Pin Studios, to the late ’70s, Milton Glaser was one of the most celebrated graphic designers of his day, whose work graced countless book and album covers, posters, magazine covers, and advertisements, both famous and little-known. Glaser largely defined the international visual style for illustration, advertising, and typeface design, and his legacy continues to influence modern creatives. For example, in 2014, Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner enlisted Glaser to design the ad campaign and branding for the show’s final season.

His renowned work garnered solo exhibitions at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. As the creator of the iconic ‘I Love NY’ logo (featuring a heart symbol in place of the word ‘love’) and cofounder of New York Magazine, Glaser received numerous accolades and lifetime achievement awards. Across thousands of works across all print media, he invented a graphic language of bright, flat color, drawing, and collage, imbued with wit. This collection of work from Glaser’s Pop period features hundreds of examples of his design that have not been seen since its original publication, demonstrating the graphic revolution that transformed design and popular culture.

Watch our latest PRINT Book Club meeting to hear the books’ authors discuss Glaser’s work during this period and the role it played in the ’60s and ’70s as Glaser invented a new standard for editorial and advertising art and typography.

Don’t own your own copy of Milton Glaser: POP yet? You can order one here.

The post Think You’ve Seen All of Milton Glaser’s Work? appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Earlier this week, PRINT Book Club welcomed Dr. Elizabeth “Dori” Tunstall to discuss how we can challenge hierarchical structures in the design industry by replacing judgement, pain, and repression with equity, inclusion, and diversity. Her new book, Decolonizing Design, was the backdrop for a robust conversation about the processes by which institutions, instructors, and the rest of us can transform design theory and practice by bolstering creatives from oft-excluded cultures of BIPOC communities.

Dr. Tunstall is a leading figure in the movement to decolonize design, Dean of the Faculty of Design at Ontario College of Art and Design University (OCAD U), and the first Black (and Black female) dean of a design faculty anywhere in the world. As she spoke with Debbie Millman, Steve Heller, and an engaged audience, Dr. Tunstall shared her practical ideas, lived experiences, and extensive research to explain what decolonizing design means, how it heals, and how to practice it in our institutions today.

But this is just a taste of this exciting dialogue— you can learn more about Dr. Tunstall’s process and practice by registering for the on-demand PRINT Book Club here. For an even deeper dive into her groundbreaking ideas, you can purchase a copy of Decolonizing Design here.

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Niemann produces scores of surprises without breaking a sweat or pencil point. Never content to cloak himself in a single method or style, he employs many—sometimes all at once. He makes the art director’s job a veritable holiday. Just give him a subject, and off he goes to his bat cave only to return, in what always seems to be (and often is) minutes (an hour if he’s in the middle of another job), with ideas that the average mortal would not—could not—have imagined.

This may sound like hyperbolic fanboy exuberance, but I exaggerate not (well, not entirely). I was reminded of this prowess during the Book Club when he showed one of his favorite ideas—one of the many he did for me, which is among the five best I have ever commissioned out of thousands from other great artists. But enough superlatives! Just look at what I mean:

Anyone with their eyes open and synapses firing can see that this simple, unadorned image is about a popularly held incontrovertible belief—right or wrong, left and right—in the sanctity of the 2nd Amendment guaranteeing a citizen’s right to bear arms. Yet it nonetheless goes further as a critical commentary about this widely held belief being much more than an essential constitutional right; it argues that these rights are so existentially inextricable to Americans that guns have evolved beyond law and ethos into biology and pathology, indeed the very structure of the nation’s anatomical self. There have been thousands of editorial images commenting, critiquing, protesting and supporting gun rights. Every time there is a mass shooting, the litany of clichés is rolled out of the cartoon arsenal. Some are clever, others are brutal, most are didactic. But none brings the fundamental issue home as clearly, cleverly and daringly as this. At the moment it was presented everyone who saw the rough sketch understood that the issue could not be expressed in a more bold or acerbic manner.

Niemann’s Idea Diary is a wellspring of intelligence, humor, play and the essence of ideation. This image shows how a powerful idea is invaluable. It also underscores an important lesson: Good ideas are valuable, great ideas are invaluable and super-powered ideas are invincible.

The post The Daily Heller: Christoph Niemann, the Great Ideator appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Recently, Debbie Millman and Steven Heller interviewed the grand master of the deceptively simple, Christoph Niemann, about his new artist book, IDEA DIARY. This self-published work from the author and designer’s artist-centric business Abstractometer Press features 240 pages of his wry visual observations. During PRINT Book Club, Niemann shared insights and told stories about the images he created and the processes he used to get ideas out of his head and onto the page.

While Niemann is known for his witty illustrative style, IDEA DIARY proves that it extends to the written word as well. You can see this immediately in his list of the ten rules that shape his idea drawings:

1. If the reader doesn’t think it’s funny, it’s not funny.
2. If I can act out the drawing on a stage with people and props, it’s usually not good enough.
3. If I can adequately explain the drawing over the phone, it’s usually not good enough.
4. An idea drawing is like solving a problem that I just invented. If the solution doesn’t, the problem might be the problem (and not the solution).
5. Start by getting the easy ones out of the system.
6. Any idea that pops into my head without drawing probably has popped into somebody else’s head.
7. It usually gets interesting when the drawing on paper doesn’t work as I had imagined in my head.
8. Feeling a little angry is bad for thinking but good for drawing.
9. I need 30 so I can kill 20 and end up with 10.
10. There’s always another idea.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg— you can learn all about Niemann’s process by registering for the on-demand Book Club here. If you wish to purchase this book (it comes signed and with a letterpress print) it can only be found on Niemann’s website here.

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